Koh Samui - khao sok. Check in was easy at the office, the boat was on time and quite comfy for a car ferry. Changing to the bus was where it gone downhill. We got put in a nice big bus, after 30 minutes we were told only those to the airport in that bus, quite rudly sent out. Then they counted us and we were let in, now we didn't get to sit next to each other. The bus was comfy and driven to the phantip office in town, we waited maybe 30 minutes, able to buy quite good sandwiches there. Little bad information about what van to get on etc, but finally ours came and it was just half full. The driver stopped plenty of times to pick up locals or drop off parcels etc. Drove like a madman, which seems to be the standard for van drivers in Thailand. We arrived at the "van station" outside khao sok. I think we were offered to pay 100 baht more or something per person to be driven to the hotels. We just walked the 15 minutes, a nice walk. We arrived about 15-30 minutes before scheduled time. Don't expect good service or to get information enough to know where to go at any time.
we did a van from our hotel in koh samui to the port, then a ferry, then a bus to surat thani town and then a minivan to khao sok. It felt that the transfers could've been minimized, or at least the waiting times between them, since we had to wait for about an hour twice. The vehicles were all comfortable except for the monivan from surat thani to khao sok, whose AC was very weak and the seats were very uncomfortable.
The phantip office where you have to collect your tickets before getting the ferry is annoyingly far away from the pier, luckily our driver waited and took us straight there though.
The ferry we were on was very large, smooth ride, shop on board and had toilets.
We were then transferred onto a large bus after exiting the ferry, after a while driving we all had to get off and swap into a van than took us to Khao sok
Overall by Thai standards the trip was fairly good but it'd a shame they make you swap transport and wait around
Whole trip had 3 transport changes. 1. Ferry was fine 2.From pier to Surat Thani we had really mean driver, who screamed at passengers. 3. The third mini van was very uncomfortable. We were crammed in the back along with all the passengers' luggage. Additionally, it was very hot inside.
Simply the worst journey I have had in my time travelling south east Asia. The ferry was absolutely fine, it’s the company Raja use for the transfer between Donsak and Khao Sok that is the issue. There was 5 (!!!) different forms of transport to get on for this part of the journey, upon asking why we have to change again, I was greeted by a very angry man who kept saying what’s your name aggressively. As
เรือเฟอร์รี่ เรือเฟอร์รี่, Raja Ferry (ราชา เฟอร์รี่), 11 ก.ค. 2023
SV
Silke V
Everything went very smooth and we were always pointed to the right vans during our two transfers. We even arrived half an hour early on our destination. The only thing that was less pleasant was that the second minibus smelled like feet the entire time
